"What the hell do you think you're doing? Are you insane?! Are you trying to get us all killed?!"

"Shut up! I'm sick and tired of your whining and bitching! What do you expect to accomplish by sitting here and hiding?"

Aichi and Yoshiyuki were fighting. I often used to them fighting during lunch break, but never like this. Was I supposed to interfere? Should I tell them to stop? I didn't know.

"You can't go out there, you have no idea what might be waiting!" Aichi looked scared out of his mind.

Yoshiyuki was furious. "You fucking coward," he spat. "You think if you just sit here and wait, someone's going to come save you? We're the upperclassmen here! Misaki and Mizuki and the rest are still out there in this godforsaken place. They're in danger!"

"Are you stupid? So are we!" Aichi stepped forward, throwing one arm out to the side expressively. He was shaking all over, but his fear only seemed to fuel his conviction. "I'm not going out there again! That…that monster with the hammer…what if he's still out there?!"

"Fine, then I'll go by myself!"

"No! What if you just end up leading it here?"

Yoshiyuki moved forward so fast that Aichi didn't have time to react, grabbing him by the collar. "You son of a bitch. You think you're gonna stop me? You think you can?!"

None of this was helping. I had to say something. "Stop it. We shouldn't be fighting…"

"Stay out of this, Kokuhaku," growled Yoshiyuki, without taking his eyes off of Aichi.

But Aichi suddenly started struggling, breaking Yoshiyuki's grip and stumbling back, balancing himself against a desk. "She's right, Shinohara, we have to stay quiet and stay here!"

"What?! That's not what she's saying at all! We have to quit wasting time and get out of here."

"That's not what I—" I tried to speak up again, but they weren't listening.

"Whether you like it or not, I'm leaving this room," said Yoshiyuki.

Aichi broke eye contact with him. "Tch! Fine, you stubborn bastard, go out and die if you want. Just don't come running back here with that bastard with the hammer on your tail, or I swear to god I'm locking that door in your face!"

"Coward," Yoshiyuki snapped, eyes flashing angrily. I flinched as he directed that stormy gaze at me. "Kokuhaku, come on," he said.

I shook my head quickly. "No! We can't split up!" They couldn't possibly think it was a good idea. Parting ways, in a place like this?

Contempt blazed in Yoshiyuki's expression as he nodded over at Aichi. "Take it up with him," he said.

I looked to Aichi, who avoided my gaze. "You…you should come with us. It'll be safer," I said, realizing even as I said it how unconvincing I sounded. I tried another argument. "Do you really think you'll be fine here on your own? There's safety in numbers. So please…just come with us. We can find everyone and get out of here…" By the end, my voice was shaking.

It wasn't really that I trusted Aichi, or that I particularly liked him. In fact, the opposite was true. I didn't trust that if Yoshiyuki and I left him alone he wouldn't turn up dead later.

Already, three of my classmates had died. Maybe more.

I didn't know how long we'd been there.

I didn't know if there was a way out.

Outside, there were bodies. Countless corpses of countless people my age, brutally murdered in all sorts of ways.

I didn't want to go back out there, into the hallways. None of the skills I had honed for so long could help me in this hellish place, and the thought frightened me to the core, rendering useless years of hardening my spirit by through swordsmanship.

But Yoshiyuki was going, and he wasn't going to be stopped. Even though he was in the year above me, I'd known him since we were both small. He was my father's top student at our dojo, too stubborn to accept anything less than his own best efforts. I had to go with him. I couldn't bear it if something were to happen to him. I didn't have many friends, after all.

I was still looking nervously to Aichi. He glared at the floor, fear and frustration etched into his features. Finally, his lip curled in a snarl and he shoved his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. "Fine. Fine! I…I'm coming. But," he glared at Yoshiyuki, "if we run into trouble, I'm out of there. I'm not going to get killed because of you."

"Fine by me," said Yoshiyuki coolly, brushing by Aichi to get to the door. He cracked it open and peered out. "Nothing out there now."

My legs felt like jelly. I tried to gather them under me as I staggered to my feet, grabbing a desk for support. Neither of the boys seemed to notice my struggles.

When we ventured back out into the corridor, it somehow felt colder than before. Aichi and I hovered anxiously near the doorway as Yoshiyuki checked left and right for any dangers.

"Where to, O brave leader?" said Aichi sarcastically.

Yoshiyuki ignored the barb, peering down the left side of the hallway, the way we had come from. "Sudo…" he muttered. "Maybe he's…"

I shuddered. Sudo. He'd been with us until less than fifteen minutes before, when the man with the hammer chased us from the first floor hallway up to the second floor, to the classroom we'd been hiding in. He'd come from the custodian's room without any warning, and we all panicked. Yoshiyuki and Aichi were fast, already ahead when Sudo stepped on a broken board and fell. I tried to grab his hand and pull him up, but he pushed me away and yelled for me to run.

I heard him scream behind me, but only once.

"Jesus fuck, Shinohara, are you dense? Did you see the size of that son of a bitch who was chasing us? Sudo's dead. Dead, dead, dead." Aichi said this so fast he was practically babbling. A floorboard under his feet creaked and he nearly jumped out of his skin.

"We don't know that," insisted Yoshiyuki.

"I don't…I don't want to go down there…" I mumbled. I didn't want to see Sudo's head splattered across the floor, didn't want to think about what I might have prevented. But in my head, I saw it all anyways.

Yoshiyuki caught the look on my face and his expression shifted from obstinate to defeated. He shook his head. "Let's go the other way."

When we reached the corner of the east hall there was a stairway to the left, while the hallway continued on into the gloom around the corner. "Wonder what's up there," Yoshiyuki muttered, pausing to peer up the staircase. I could dimly make out the half-rotted remains of a person slumped against the wall on the landing.

"We're never going to find a way out of here if we keep going up, unless you're planning on jumping out a window," said Aichi.

"Not like we've been able to open any," countered Yoshiyuki. Their words cut the air like knives, creating a tension in the air equally as unbearable as the dark atmosphere pervading this entire building. It was almost physically painful, to the point where I had the urge to grab fistfuls of my hair by the roots and pull it out.

In the end, we went up the stairs, Yoshiyuki eventually convincing Aichi that exploring the area thoroughly would prevent us from having to backtrack later. I tried not to look at the corpse on the landing as we passed it, but I saw out of the corner of my eye that it was a girl about my age.

Upstairs we found bathrooms. Aichi planted his feet firmly in the hall, adamantly refusing to enter the small, dimly-lit rooms. "I'm not going in there. I'm not. I already told you, don't go dragging me into your little suicide mission. Whatever killed all these people in here…it can't just be the hammer guy."

He said what we were all thinking, ever since we found the bodies of Kagurazaka and Fujii. Kagurazaka was lying on the floor with his torso torn wide open, his ribcage protruding from the soupy mess like the legs of a dead crab, slimy with his own blood and whatever bodily fluids had leaked out. The worst part was…the way his organs spilled out of his body, purple and glistening, the bloody hand prints all around…it looked like something, or someone, had been eating him.

Fujii had still been alive when we found him. I wished he hadn't been. He lay face-up on the floor, limbs twitching feebly as an unearthly gargled moaning sound issued from his throat. Blood had soaked the floor all around him from various stab wounds on his body, but nothing was as ghastly as the pool of partly-congealed fluid that was pooled in his gaping mouth, the rows of broken teeth stained red with the blood gushing from the stump of his severed tongue. In a pool of blood on the floor nearby was a small, child-sized footprint.

Standing in that hallway in front of the boys' bathroom, I couldn't get my feet to move forward, even if I wanted to. I was petrified of what we might find in there.

After a long moment in which everybody avoided each other's eyes, Yoshiyuki stirred. "I'm going to look," he said, glaring at each of us as if in challenge. Neither of us moved. I mentally berated myself for it, but still…I couldn't move.

Yoshiyuki stepped past us, pausing just at the entrance to the bathroom and peering into the gloom beyond. Then he entered it.

A few tense moments passed. I felt like I could hardly breathe. Then there was a scream.

"AHHHGH!"

Aichi made as if to bolt, but I grabbed his arm, a combination of fear and concern for Yoshiyuki locking my legs in place. He ripped it violently from my grasp and I fell to the floor as he took off running, barely managing two steps before Yoshiyuki emerged from the bathroom, pale-faced but outwardly unharmed.

"Fucking…fuck," he said weakly, backing away from the doorway like it contained a live bomb.

"What? What is it?" Aichi demanded, still edging towards the stairs. I clambered to my feet, ready to run.

"I-I don't…" Yoshiyuki ran a hand through his hair shakily. "There was…a voice? I tried to open the door to the last stall and—wait, didn't you guys hear it?"

I shook my head wordlessly. The scream had been unmistakably Yoshiyuki's, but I hadn't heard anything else but silence.

"It was really loud," Yoshiyuki said. "I mean, I swear I didn't see anything in there, but as soon as I opened it a voice yelled 'SHUT THE GODDAMN DOOR!'"

"All I heard was you," said Aichi tersely.

"But that's…it was way louder than…"

The thought was hovering in the air, unsaid. Neither of the boys wanted to suggest something so preposterous. So I did. "I think...this place is haunted," I murmured.

Aichi's derisive laugh had an edge of hysteria to it. "Haunted? What the hell? There's no such thing as ghosts. They don't exist!"

Yoshiyuki looked uncertain. He glanced back over to the bathroom door. "Maybe," he muttered. Then his eyes flicked back to me, widening as they came to rest on my hand. "What happened?"

I followed his gaze, realizing that I was unconsciously nursing my left hand, which was bleeding. I dimly remembered hitting it on a rusted bucket as I fell, but I had been too wrapped up in panic to really notice. I glanced over at Aichi, whose jaw had tightened as he looked everywhere but at me. "…I fell," I said. I took a moment to examine the wound. It was fortunately not very deep, just a graze across the side of my palm, but it was bleeding quite a bit. "It's not bad. If I had a bandage, I could—"

"Here, use this," said Yoshiyuki, digging in his pockets to produce a handkerchief.

"Oh. Thank you," I said, a little taken aback. I wrapped it around the cut, binding it there with a hair ribbon I had in my skirt pocket.

"Hurry up," Aichi said, positioning himself as far away from the bathroom door as possible. "We can't afford to stand around in places like this."

The girl's room loomed large on the other side of the hall, like the gaping maw of some unknown beast. Even Yoshiyuki was reluctant to enter.

"The girl's room…seems kinda wrong for a guy to go in there by himself," he said. Honorable as always. It made me a little ashamed to have so far left everything to him, when as the daughter of the head of such a prestigious dojo, shouldn't I have been able to be depended upon as well? Besides…if Yoshiyuki was going to go in, it would leave me alone outside with Aichi, which was a prospect that became less and less desirable every moment that passed.

"I'll go with you," I said.

Yoshiyuki smiled at me gratefully. He knew how afraid of the dark I was, how even the simplest ghost story could keep me up all night. "Thank you, Kokuhaku."

We went into the bathroom together, caution in every step. Three cracked sinks greeted us immediately after entering, presided over by grime-coated mirrors and giving off a powerful smell of ammonia. I examined these while Yoshiyuki crept over to the stalls.

I was secretly relieved that the mirrors were rendered useless by the layers of grime covering them. There was something deeply unsettling about mirrors, even though I knew that rationally, scientifically, they were nothing more than polished metal and glass. My relief lasted until I came to the last sink and realized that unlike the other two, this mirror was crystal clear. It was suspiciously out of place in this building, were everything was broken, dusty, grimy, or cracked. I knew I shouldn't look into it, but human nature got the better of me.

I stared back out at myself from the mirror, wide-eyed and unnaturally pale in the darkness, and was momentarily transfixed by how haggard I looked. Then, just in the corner, I thought I saw a flicker of motion.

I whirled, heart pounding. My eyes, now adjusted to the darkness, saw nothing but the walls and broken floorboards.

"Kokuhaku? What happened?" asked Yoshiyuki, looking over at me in concern.

"I thought I saw something," I said faintly. "In the mirror."

Yoshiyuki looked around as well, then, seeing nothing, approached me. "What was it?"

"A child's face...just the eyes and mouth. They were grinning…"

Yoshiyuki swore. "Damn, this place is creepy. We've got to get out of here as soon as—" he stopped, staring into the sink behind me. "What's that?"

I turned to look, deliberately avoiding looking into the mirror. In the sink was a mess of black hair, so much of it that it was clogging the drain. But there, tangled in the strands…was that a key?

Yoshiyuki gingerly reached out, picking it up with two fingers to avoid touching the soggy clumps of hair it was buried in. It was, in fact, a key.

Yoshiyuki examined it in the dim flicker of light from the doorway. "It says something on the side…'Infirmary'?"

"If this is a school, there must be one," I said.

He pocketed the key. "All right, I guess we'll hold onto this for now…" he glanced uneasily into the clear mirror. "I didn't find anything in the stalls, so we should probably get out of here."

I couldn't agree more.

Out in the hallway, Aichi was strung as tight as a bowstring. "Did you find anything?" he quickly demanded as we exited the bathroom.

"A key," said Yoshiyuki. "It's for the Infirmary, wherever that is."

"If that's it, then let's leave," Aichi said. "This place is a dead end. If we get caught up here it's all over."

"You good to go, Kokuhaku?" Yoshiyuki asked, pointedly ignoring Aichi. I nodded.

We went back down the stairs, continuing straight down the hallway. There was a door marked "Science Lab", but no matter how hard we tried, it wouldn't open. It wasn't even locked; it simply would not budge, as if it were painted on the wall.

The next door was clearly marked "Infirmary". We all exchanged glances, and then Yoshiyuki took the key out of his pocket and slid it into the lock, turning it. There was an audible click, and the door slid open.

In the corner of the room beyond, a small candle was lit, its tiny light wavering feebly against the oppressive darkness. I could feel the heaviness in the air here; an unbearable stillness that spoke of eternity. All of the hairs in my body were standing on end.

"We shouldn't go in this place," I said automatically.

Yoshiyuki shifted his feet. "It's not like we can afford to overlook anything…" he muttered, almost to himself.

"I'm still staying out here," Aichi declared.

Yoshiyuki gave him a dirty look and then went to step into the room. As soon as his foot passed the threshold, it was like some invisible barrier had been broken, like the surface tension of water being pierced by a single drop.

An unbearable pain drilled into my head like an icepick. I clutched at it and wavered on my feet, a darkness passing across my vision as if I had stood up too fast and the blood went rushing to my head.

When my head cleared, I lowered my hands. Yoshiyuki and Aichi were staring at me strangely, their expressions more of fear than concern.

"What did you just say?" Asked Yoshiyuki slowly.

I was confused. "I-I didn't say anything."

"Yes you did," Aichi snapped. "Just now, your voice went all flat and creepy! You said—"

"You said, 'Sachi is my pride and joy. '" Yoshiyuki finished.

I shook my head quickly. "No, I didn't! I didn't say anything!" My voice was embarrassingly shrill, but I couldn't help it. I was terrified. Dark splotches blotted over my vision, and I cried out, grabbing fistfuls of hair. God, my head hurt! What was happening to me?!

Then everything was dark. And cold. The hallway was gone. The school was gone. Yoshiyuki and Aichi were gone. I couldn't think straight, or maybe just not at all.

She'd do anything for me.

I was everything, and nothing.

I don't think she even recognizes me anymore,

There was so much sadness here. Endless, depthless despair echoed through me, a stagnant ocean of pain and grief and mourning.

But I still love her

And in the center of this tide of emotions, black and endless as night,

With all my heart.

There was a churning, seething, white-hot hatred.

"Kokuhaku! Kokuhaku!"

I snapped out of it, suddenly gasping, breathless. Yoshiyuki had grabbed my shoulders and was shaking them roughly.

"Wh-what happened?" I asked him unsteadily.

It was Aichi who answered, cowering against the hallway wall and flinging out a hand to point at me. "You—you can't say you don't remember! You said something again! What the hell is wrong with you!?"

I was still reeling, feeling inexplicably lightheaded from the experience. Yoshiyuki pulled me away from the still-open infirmary door and I instantly felt better, if not still a little dizzy. I took deep breaths, leaning against the wall for support.

Inside the infirmary, something stirred. Out of the darkness came the sound of the pages of a book turning.

And then there was a woman's voice, lilting and friendly for all the menace it contained.

"Is anyone still here?"

"AHHH! WHAT IS THAT?!" Aichi was pointing towards the open door, trembling violently. The darkness had taken a physical form, drifting slowly towards the door. Towards us.

"Damn!" barked Yoshiyuki, leaping forward to slam the door shut. It slid closed with a loud bang, and he quickly turned the key in the lock. On the other side, despite the absence of any light other than the tiny candle, a shadowed figure was silhouetted in the window.

"Oh God…oh God, what is that?" croaked Aichi.

"We have to get out of here," I said, fighting to keep my voice steady, to make it sound authoritative rather than terrified. The door began to rattle.

Aichi let out a whimper of fear and bolted, Yoshiyuki pausing only to grab my arm as he followed suit, pulling me in tow.

We ran down the stairs, made a sharp left and kept running, panic carrying us blindly through the halls. When Yoshiyuki and I caught up with Aichi, we found ourselves in a room just off the main hall with shelves lined neatly in rows, some of them with tiny shoes still housed in their cubbyholes. The entryway.

Aichi was pounding desperately on the front door. "Let us out! LET US OUT! Damn it, damn it, damn it, why won't you OPEN?!"

"Aichi! Cut it out!" said Yoshiyuki, going to grab his shoulder.

Aichi recoiled, turning to take a swipe at Yoshiyuki with a furious snarl.

"Hey!" Yoshiyuki stepped back in surprise, arms raised defensively.

"Don't touch me," snapped Aichi, "Stay away! You, and you!" he pointed at Yoshiyuki, and then at me. "What the hell is wrong with you? I mean," he his gaze flicked back to Yoshiyuki, "you're just an idiot. Going around to explore this place? Fucking hell, it's like you're trying to get us killed! And you," he was looking at me now, eyes wild and glazed with terror, glasses askew. He looked deranged. "I know there's something wrong with you. You were creepy already, Akaboji, and that was before you started spouting that weird shit back there! You—you're possessed or something. Or crazy. I can just tell you're gonna snap, gonna stick a knife in someone's back and start laughing like a psycho, and I'm not hanging around for that."

I didn't know what to say. Probably I should have been angry, or offended. But instead I was just scared. I wished I was holding a shinai. Or a book. Just something, anything, to ground myself with.

Because he was right. There was something wrong with me. I could feel it eating away at the edges of my mind.

Yoshiyuki moved to stand between me and Aichi. "Shut up," he said, voice low and dangerous. "You shut up right now, or I'll—"

"Or you'll what, huh? Don't you come near me, Shinohara. I'm not going with you. You can poke around here all you want, get murdered just like all the other saps in here. Just leave me out of it!" He was shaking like a leaf, back pressed against the main doors.

That was when the earthquake struck.

The whole building shook like a dog left out in the rain, shedding loose pieces of ceiling and floor. The floorboards heaved under my feet, throwing me against the one of the shelves, which I prayed wouldn't fall on me as I grabbed it for support. Next to me I could hear Yoshiyuki swearing loudly as scores of dead insects toppled from the shelves, enveloping us in a hail of rotting carapaces.

It went on for what seemed like an eternity. I could feel the dead insects sliding down my shirt, stiff legs brushing against my bare skin, and the worst thing was that I couldn't do anything about it. I just held on tight and squeezed my eyes shut.

Finally, it was over. The shaking stopped suddenly, the building settling back into place, creaking and snapping. I opened my eyes.

"You okay?" Yoshiyuki asked me. I nodded mutely.

Aichi was curled up into a ball in the corner by the door. "Oh God…why is this happening?" he moaned.

"I don't know," Yoshiyuki snapped at him. "I don't know, and I don't care, but I'm not like you. I'm not going to run from it. I'm finding the others, and we're all getting out of here." He pulled himself to his feet, shaking dust and dead bugs from his clothes. "And I don't give a damn what you do. I'm leaving. Kokuhaku, you coming?"

"Yes," I said quietly. "Let's go."

I turned to look at Aichi as we went, and as he sat there, legs drawn up to his chest like a child, he started to laugh. I quickly looked away.

Somehow, impossibly, the earthquake had made the hallway bigger. Where there was once a wall visible in the gloom to the right, now the hall stretched far into the distance. Never before this point had it been so obvious that we were dealing with something outside the normal bounds of reality. It sent shivers down my spine.

"Well…" said Yoshiyuki, gazing down the newly-extended hallway, "We haven't been that way yet."

It was like the building was daring us to go there. I hesitated. "We don't know what might be down there."

"Yeah. Might be even worse than here. Might be the way out, too. Either heaven or hell."

"That's true," I said.

An hour later, I found myself wondering how we ever could have thought there would be anything resembling "heaven" in this place.

"Is she still there?" I demanded, all of my energy spent on carrying half of Yoshiyuki's weight, his arm slung over my shoulder. His right leg below the knee was a mangled mess of flesh and broken bone, lopped messily off by a bear trap set deep in the shadows of the upstairs hall. I didn't know how he was still conscious.

"Dunno," he rasped, making a feeble effort to twist his head around. "Maybe. Can't see."

We passed a doorway in which a girl's body lay, freshly dead. It appeared as if someone had slammed the door into her neck repeatedly, until her head came off. I grimly increased my pace.

We were almost to the exit. "Just a little more," I muttered, more to myself than to Yoshiyuki. Not being able to look to see if we were still being chased was incredibly nerve-wracking. My head was pounding, too—the dark atmosphere of this building had set my ears ringing the moment I walked through the door, and now it felt a thousand times worse. I had to get out.

"There," I panted, reaching the door, struggling to open it. I stumbled out onto the covered walkway with Yoshiyuki, propping him clumsily against the rain-slicked railing as I turned to close the door behind us. Thankfully, I saw no sign of the tell-tale blue glow signaling the arrival of the headless girl who was chasing us.

"Ahh..ghh," groaned Yoshiyuki, struggling to keep himself upright. I hurried back to help him.

He looked bad. Already a small puddle of blood had pooled under him, and it just kept coming. He desperately needed first aid, but where in this place were we going to find proper medical supplies, let alone someone who could use them?

The answer struck me at the same time as a terrible dread gripped my heart. The infirmary. Of course.

Somehow, against all odds, I managed to get Yoshiyuki into one of the upstairs classrooms. He was unconscious by then, breathing shallowly. I'd tied his wound off with the sleeve of his jacket earlier, but it didn't even come close to stemming the blood.

"Stay here," I whispered to him, even though he couldn't hear me, even though he was in no condition to move. "I'll be right back. It's going to be okay. You're going to be okay…" tears were forming in my eyes, but I didn't have time for that. I had to get to the infirmary. I dug the key out of his pocket and gripped it tightly; it was my last shred of hope in this monstrous place.

The infirmary was just as we had left it: shut and locked. I hesitated just for a brief moment before I slipped the key into the lock, heart hammering in fear of what might lie on the other side of the door.

The key turned smoothly. The door slid open easily.

I didn't see the black shadow. The room was empty. I hurried inside, desperate to find the supplies that I needed and get out. There, on the shelf, bandages. Stained and threadbare, but usable. Alcohol for disinfectant, scissors to cut cloth with…

When I reached for the scissors, the door slammed shut.

I whirled instantly, unable to stop the cry that ripped from my throat. I practically threw myself across the room, grabbing the door handle and pulling on it with all my might.

It was locked.

Of course it was locked. Of course. Of course! Hysteria bubbled up inside me like foam in the mouth of a rabid animal, wild and unchecked. The door wouldn't open, and I had left the key in the lock, on the other side!

From behind me, there came the sound of pages turning…

Sachi… have you come to find me?

I banged my fists against the door, kicked at it, stabbed at it with the scissors. Behind me, I could feel the shadowed mass moving, crossing the room. Coming for me.

Sachi is my pride and joy. She'd do anything for me.

I screamed and screamed and screamed. I screamed for Yoshiyuki, for God, for my mother.

She'd even kill lots of people to keep me company.

And then, swallowed in the throes of panic and despair, my vision went black.

MISATO MUNICIPAL BROTHERHOOD HIGH

Kokuhaku Akaboji, Class 2-4

Consumed by curse; faded from existence.

Yoshiyuki Shinohara, Class 3-4

Caught in trap; bled out.

Shin Aichi, Class 3-6

Trapped in classroom; starved to death.

Also mentioned:

Hatto Sudo, Class 2-4

Took blow to head for friend; skull split open.

Ken Fujii, Class 2-4

Stabbed with scissors by child spirit; bled out.

A/N: Hi! I'm still writing this. I have an undying love for Corpse Party, but even the most enduring passion can't burn brightly all the time.

For this chapter…well, didn't Kokuhaku always seem kind of mysterious? You meet her when she's still alive, after all…I couldn't help but notice that some of the possessed crazy-speak she mutters sounds like something Yoshie might say ("I do appreciate Sachiko's kind gesture, but any more will only bring me sadness…Please, no more…"). From what information I could gather, she doesn't have a lot of friends and is pretty reserved, so I tried to reflect that in the use of surnames to address her classmates. Also her dad runs a Kendo dojo, hence the reference to swordsmanship and the shinai (it's a kendo sword).

On a side note, the friendly spirit whom Seiko and Naomi encounter in chapter 1 of the game is Yoshiyuki. He also has the dubious honor of being the first dead person you encounter in-game. Good job, bro.

Shin Aichi is probably better known for his final sentiments, which are written thusly on the chalkboard of the room he died in in Chapter 1: LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LETMEOUTLETMEOUT

Oh, and I made a few references to chapters I wrote before this. So…good job if you spot 'em.

Thanks for reading! Please review :)